An Event-Based Semantics for Japanese Emphatic Particles

Abstract

Inspired by Herburger (2000), I will develop an event-based semantics for Japanese emphatic particles which can address the issue of the mechanism of association with focus involving the emphatic particles. The proposed semantics makes use of and modifies Herburger's three key ideas: events as basic entities, decomposition of predicates into subatomic formulas, and separation of backgrounded and foregrounded information. I will show the resultant DRS notation can describe the meaning of the emphatic particles very explicitly in terms of the discourse referents involved in the described and compared events, and also account for the interaction of emphatic particles and semantic particles in a perspicuous way